The Black Shriving (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 2) Read Free Page B

kill. Had seen her draw a demon almost fifteen feet tall to its death. She was greatly changed, almost unrecognizable as the young lady he'd served as a page.
    Finally she lunged, a skewering blow that ended with her foreleg bent so deeply her thigh nearly touched her calf, her back leg extended out behind her like the tail of a comet. Her sword wavered minutely, at the very limit of her reach, and then she sighed and rose to her feet. Her tunic was dark with sweat between her shoulder blades.
    "I get up early so as to avoid being gawped at, Asho."
    "I - ah -" Asho felt his face flush. "I'm not gawping." It didn't come out as gravely as he had hoped.
    "No?" She still had her back to him, her forearms moving as she tightened the white sash that was wrapped around her abdomen. "Then what would you call it? Leering?"
    "Leering?" Asho caught his desire to apologize by the throat. He'd done nothing wrong. "This is an open space. I got up early to practice. I'd not expected to see you jumping around out here already."
    "Jumping around?" Now she did turn, her gaze tempestuous. Sweat ran down the side of her freckled cheek. "Excuse me?"
    Damn it . Why was it so hard to just talk to her? "All right. Training."
    "Jumping around." She swung her blade in a tight circle by her side, and caught it with a snap so that its point was aimed at his chest. "As opposed to the lumbering you execute when you're clad in your full plate?"
    Asho smiled. "I'll admit it's hard to jump around like a cricket when you're wearing almost a fifty pounds of armor."
    "No, you just seem to try to fall on the closest opponent so as to crush them. The height of Ennoian military sophistication." The point of her blade was still aimed at his chest. "Well, you're not wearing plate armor now. Come over here so I can prove it's not the armor's fault you fight like a drunken ox."
    Asho felt a prick of anger twinned with excitement. "I swore to protect the Kyferins, not put one over my knee and paddle her with the flat of my sword."
    "Oh, that's good," said Kethe. "Yes, keep it up. It's going to make embarrassing you so much more satisfying."
    Asho drew his sword. It was a standard single-handed castle blade, forged by Elon of clean, polished steel, as long as his arm and with a blood groove down its center to lighten its weight. Equally adept at cutting and thrusting. Straight cross guard, leather-bound hilt, circular pommel. His other sword was buried a foot deep in stone beneath Mythgræfen Hold – a black blade with runes of fire, a blade he'd sworn not to wield again. This simple sword would do.
    Asho walked around the courtyard, the shattered flagstones crunching beneath his boots, and stepped between two saplings to face Kethe. He'd not warmed up, though the Black Gate would take him before he asked for a few minutes to swing his arms and stretch.
    Kethe began to slowly circle around him, her slender blade held up high behind her head, both hands beside her right ear, the sword's point aimed at the rear wall. It was a guard position that promised a violent swing, a brutal offense. Asho hesitated, then slid into a defensive stance, blade held vertically before his face, cross guard just below his eyes. She was gazing right through him, he thought, then, no; at a point just below his chin. His shoulders, realized Asho. That was what she was watching.
    "I grew up watching my father's Black Wolves," she said, her voice deceptively soft. "I saw how they equated the length and weight of their sword with their masculinity. It wasn't how skillfully they wielded their blades that mattered, but rather how hard they could ram them home." Her gaze flickered up to Asho's eyes for a moment. "I pitied their wives."
    Asho blinked, taken aback, and it was exactly then that Kethe launched her attack, gliding forward to swing with blistering speed. Asho stumbled back, and it was his stance's natural facility for parrying that allowed him to block her attacks, left, right, then left